Civil justice regime set for wholesale change
Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has announced wholesale reform of the civil justice regime, implementing Lord Justice Jackson’s proposals on costs as well as new initiatives for the county courts.
Speaking in the House of Commons this week, Clarke confirmed the government would proceed with the controversial Jackson reforms, under which the current conditional fee arrangement (CFA) or “no win no fee” regime will be abolished.
Lawyers will no longer be able to claim success fees and after-the-event insurance premiums from losing defendants and will instead be required to accept a proportion (up to a quarter) of the defendant’s damages under contingency fee arrangements. There will be a 10% increase in damages payable. A new test will be introduced to ensure that overall costs are proportionate.
Announcing the measures, Clarke said: “With no major reform for 15 years, the civil justice system has got out of kilter. Businesses and other people who have been sued can find that spiralling legal costs, slow court processes, unnecessary litigation and the ‘no win no fee’ structures, which mean greater payments to lawyers than to claimants, are setting them back millions of pounds each year.”
However, personal injury lawyers have opposed the reforms.
David Bott, incoming president of not-for-profit campaign group the Association of Personal Injury Lawyers said: “People with the most serious of injuries face being denied access to justice because lawyers will be less able to offer ‘no win no fee’ in difficult, high value cases.
“The only party to benefit from these proposals is the negligent defendant who has caused a needless injury, or moreover his insurance company which has collected a premium to pay out in the event of such a claim.
“It is disappointing that the Ministry of Justice has been seduced by the myth of a so-called ‘compensation culture’ when the government’s statistics show that the number of claims has fallen in most categories during the past 10 years.”
Professor Dominic Regan, who is advising the senior judiciary on law reform, says: “Even in his wildest dreams I doubt that Sir Rupert Jackson would have thought that the government would accept his entire package of fundamental reforms. Re-working proportionality and Part 36 represent the icing on the reform cake. I did say in a recent NLJ article that the government had moved beyond the boundaries in which Sir Rupert worked (NLJ, 4 March 2011, p 305). Things are going to get very bumpy.” (See p 451).
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